


did you get enough love, my little dove (why do you cry?)

by Wisteria_Leigh



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Coping, Family, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidfic, Loss, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse, it's just a lot of talking, so if you're into that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23913991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisteria_Leigh/pseuds/Wisteria_Leigh
Summary: Adam placed the phone face-down on the counter. He turned his head to meet Ronan’s cautious gaze, and with a deep, trembling breath, he told him, “my mom is going to die this year.”
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, background Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 8
Kudos: 89





	did you get enough love, my little dove (why do you cry?)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sufjan Steven's ["Fourth of July"](https://youtu.be/JTeKpWp8Psw), which I heard for the first time on a bus on the way to a funeral. So.

One evening in late April, Adam’s cell phone rang. 

It was dinner time, which meant both Adam’s and Ronan’s phones sat on the kitchen counter—out of sight and far from arm’s reach. That was the rule. When phones were left in pockets, mistakenly or otherwise, their daughters would proclaim that such blatant disregard for household law—from their _parents,_ no less—demanded an equally egregious punishment. No dessert was often the verdict: a fate worse than death as far as they were concerned. 

There had, for a while, been no official declaration that dinner was to be phone-free. But then Adam said that Ronan was not allowed to answer Adam’s phone if it rang during dinner to tell the junior designers on his current Green DC environmental engineering project to “fuck off you asshole, it’s dinner time, didn’t your mother teach your basic fucking manners?” nor was he allowed to change Adam’s ringback tone to an endless loop of Murder Squash that never resolved in his voicemail. Instead, Adam agreed to keep his phone—and _all_ phones—away from the table to prevent both him from being distracted and Ronan from wholly embarrassing him and/or getting him written up by HR. 

Adam’s phone rang during dinner more often than not, which is why he usually put it on silent before plugging it into the kitchen charger. To _hear_ the phone during dinner, a heartbeat of insect wings buzzing against the granite countertop, when they were laughing and making sculptures with their mashed potatoes and seeing who could fit the most broccoli crowns in their mouths, was peculiar. Downright unprecedented. But here they were, the four of them—Ronan and Adam, and their daughters Maeve and Noah—silenced as the buzzing echoed through their house as if the walls themselves were vibrating. 

Ronan’s brow raised as Adam’s furrowed. They shared a brief glance. 

It was April 25th, Adam realized. April 25th. St. Mark’s. 

Time slowed and sagged and snapped tight, a slackline catching on his harness and punching the air out of Adam’s lungs. 

The phone kept buzzing. 

As Adam quietly excused himself from the table, Ronan shoved his face into his mashed potatoes. Noah squealed, delighted and disgusted in equal parts. Maeve half-pushed herself away from the table as if she were about to bolt, yelling about manners and civility and “Dad, oh my gosh, you’re so _embarassing_!” 

Neither noticed Adam leave. 

The smartphone sat face down on the counter precisely where he’d left it, blue light breaking through the edges. It moved one way and then the other, vibrating across the counter. It stopped. Adam held his breath. The edges glowed again as a notification popped onto the lock screen. 

It sat quietly, and Adam's hand hung in the air, fingers trembling, waiting. 

He startled when it began again. Buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. He felt the vibration in his deaf ear, heard the echo in his bones as he picked up the phone. 

He took a long, shaky breath. He had been waiting for this call. A persistent ache, a knot in the tense line of his shoulders that never went away. The pain that would follow the call, however, would be much worse. 

He pressed the green button. 

“Maura,” he said, softly. 

“Adam,” she replied. She was gentle, apologetic, but she would not let him prolong this. It was both a relief and a knife through his chest. 

He inhaled and exhaled. His hands shook. 

“You saw her.” 

She sighed. “We did.” 

“When?” he asked. “When will it happen?” 

“You know we don’t have that answer, kiddo.” And he did. But he figured it was worth asking, anyway. 

There was a long moment of silence. Even 300 Fox Way was quiet, or maybe Maura had closed the door and shoved towels in the cracks to keep the noise at a respectful level. 

“I’m sorry I ruined your dinner,” she said at last. And it was such an un-Maura-like observation that Adam nearly laughed. 

“Sounds like something Persephone would’ve said,” he replied. 

“I’ve felt her closer, these past few days. It’s a thin time, you know.” 

“Yeah, I know.” He’d been smelling phantom raspberry pies and tea tree oil and kept seeing clouds of white hair in the periphery of his vision; a ghostly encounter was a much nicer explanation than whatever terrifying terminal cancer WebMD might diagnose. 

“Well. That’s all,” Maura said, back to her usual self. “Tell the girls hello. And the Snake too, I suppose. Will you be spending a few weeks down here again this summer?” 

“Yeah, maybe. Probably. We haven’t really...you know—and with this--” 

“Right, yes. Bad time to ask. Well. We’ll talk soon.” 

She said it with such surety that Adam had to agree. Then a click, and the line was dead. 

He stood with the phone to his ear for a long time. Long enough that the girls and Ronan must have finished eating, and Ronan must have excused the girls from the table and asked them to go upstairs for a moment, and set about clearing the table himself, because when Adam finally blinked back into his body there were feet pounding up the stairs and a pile of dishes sat expectantly in the sink and Ronan was standing in the threshold, waiting: leaning against the wooden frame with his arms crossed and brow knitted. His five o’clock shadow, which had started growing at noon, was dark along his jaw and peppered with silver. A flowering black tattoo snaked over his shoulder and down the curve of his bicep, bolder and crisper in its newness than the twisting vines and talons painted into his back. 

He was watching Adam carefully. Waiting to see what he would do before making his next move. A younger version of Ronan would have been glowering, furious at whoever or whatever hung the vacancy sign in Adam’s blue eyes, able to express concern and care and love only in extremes. Age and children had sanded down Ronan’s sharp edges and crumpled the cold metal of his armor, revealing soft, vulnerable leather underneath. He would always be a warrior—Gansey's knight, through and through—but over time he’d learned that a gentle look and careful words were often more effective than brandishing a weapon. 

Sometimes, though, he still took to prodding. When Adam didn’t do anything except stand by the counter and stare vacantly at the cabinets, Ronan inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled nosily through his mouth. 

“The witches?” he asked, nodding to the phone still at Adam’s ear. Gravy was still smeared across his chin. 

Adam placed the phone face-down on the counter. He turned his head to meet Ronan’s cautious gaze, and with a deep, trembling breath, he told him, “my mom is going to die this year.” 

###### 

Thirteen years ago, Adam’s father died. Heart attack, or maybe a stroke. Adam tried very hard not to care about the fact that no one had ever told him the exact cause of death. 

The last time he had seen his mother was at the funeral. The last time he had _spoken_ to his mother had been at the funeral. She had not bothered to keep in touch. 

Wherever Alice Parrish had ended up, it couldn’t have been far from the leyline, from Henrietta, else her ghost would not have appeared. And to be perfectly frank, Adam was surprised she’d lasted this long. He had expected her to outlive his father—he had _hoped_ she would outlive his father—but she wasn’t someone who could survive on her own, not for very long, definitely not for thirteen years. She never had the chance to. Lived with her parents until she was shotgun married at 18 with Adam growing steadily in her belly. From one trailer roof to another. Led straight from the nest into the gnashing fangs of Robert. Old dogs don’t learn new tricks, wasn’t that the saying? Women like Alice--women who spent all their lives being told how to live, what to do; women whose fathers and brothers and boyfriends and husbands carved out their souls with barbed tongues and backhands over poorly-made sandwiches and specks of dirt amid scrubbed counters and floors--didn’t just become self-sufficient overnight. 

Where did someone like that go? To a relative? A sister, maybe, or a cousin? A parent, even. Adam didn’t know his family tree beyond the twig he’d grown onto—and eventually cut himself off from—so he had no idea who might be living or dead, local or far-flung. He went to a funeral, once, as a kid; he remembered the hard smack across his cheek in the parking lot after spilling the little communion cup on his one nice shirt more than he remembered who lay in the coffin. 

He did not speak to anyone at his father’s funeral. He could not recall a single face under the threadbare canopy, or sitting in the rusted metal chairs. All he remembered was the coffin. His mother. Dirt and sweat and dry eyes. Aching, roaring emptiness. 

Maybe she’d gotten married again. Or found a boyfriend, or something. Plenty of single people her age find other people. The family three trailers down from him on Antietam Lane were two 50-year-old divorcees. Did being a widow make a difference? 

The image of his mother, hollowed-out and gaunt, shacking up with another man that Adam had never met, a man who was the exact same as Robert but with a stronger heart and a longer life span to keep carving Alice’s humanity away one fist at a time-- 

No, no. That was too much. Too much. Enough. Done. Stop. 

A relative. She was probably with a relative. 

And that was... 

Well, it was a lot of things, all of them mixing together into a dark and poison sludge that grew hard and heavy in the pit of his stomach, that pressed migraines into his temples and squeezed his lungs until it became hard to breath. 

Mostly, it was vindication—for the fact that Adam had been the only one to leave that dusty town behind. 

Also, it was grief—for the fact that if extended family lived near Henrietta, he had never met them, and they had done nothing to save him. 

But then again, neither had Alice. 

####### 

In the days following the call, Adam drifted. 

Even though he was doing his work and doing it well; even though he was picking the girls up from school and taking them to gymnastic and field hockey and art classes on time and with enthusiasm; even though he brought Ronan pleasure and kissed him like the world might end tomorrow; he would pause for a moment and exhale and suddenly his chest would feel like it was caving in, empty and hollow and with an ache so all-encompassing there wasn’t a word to describe it. 

It was May. Adam sat on the front steps as Maeve and Noah ran around the yard with the dogs, Lucy and Cow. Golden rays broke through the lush tree line as the sun began its steady march toward the horizon. Ronan was grilling. Or, had been, until he slipped into the kitchen to grab a Guinness for himself and a Bold Rock Cider for Adam. 

Adam didn’t turn around when Ronan all but stomped across the porch and threw himself down beside him with a groan. He didn’t acknowledge the cold sizzle and crack of the bottle being opened, nor Ronan holding the sweating glass in front of him. 

“Hey,” Ronan said, and pressed the bottle to the base of Adam’s neck. Adam startled, blinked slowly then rapidly, dusty eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. Like he was coming back from scrying. 

Adam took the bottle from where it hovered just above his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, more a breath than a voice. 

"Where’d you go?” Ronan said softly, though he already knew the answer. Crickets tuned their strings in the azalea bushes. A chorus of birds sang discordant notes in the trees. 

“Just thinking,” Adam replied. 

They clinked their bottles together and drank in silence. It smelled like heady perfume and charcoal and meat. Noah chased a moth. 

“I want to visit my mom,” Adam said, not nearly as sudden or unexpected an announcement as it seemed. Ronan knew where his mind had been, and knew when a statement out of Adam’s mouth was an incomplete one. 

“But?” Ronan said. He followed Adam’s gaze to where Noah and Maeve were doing some sort of dance by the nascent tomato plants; touching their toes then pulling their arms up to the sky, which was, Ronan thought, from some animated movie they’d watched recently. 

“They don’t _have_ to know,” Ronan said. “You can go while they’re at camp. Be back in time to pick them up. They never ask what we do while they’re gone. They don’t care. So just—go and they’ll never know.” 

“But they should. They should know. Because I would want to know, if I were them.” Adam turned to Ronan, then. Ronan smoothed the knot of wrinkles between his eyebrows, rubbed the dark circles beneath his eyes, kissed each of his knuckles. Adam closed his eyes, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed something unpleasant. “Noah is starting to ask about my parents.” 

Ronan grimaced. There were clues scattered through their lives of a hidden story. The tightness in Adam’s shoulders when grandparents were mentioned, the deaf left ear that was never given an explanation even when asked. Their family photo albums were filled with pictures of Gansey and Blue, Ronan’s brothers, the Fox Way Aunts; photos taken by Henry on Adam and Ronan’s wedding day; of hikes up Old Rag and canoe trips down the Potomac with the girls and the Sargensy kids; of vacations to Virginia Beach with Declan and Jordan and Matthew and his wife, Claire; of barbeques on the Third of July in their backyard. That the stories told around campfires and under Christmas trees and in long drives along the Blue Ridge Parkway were about the Lynches and never the Parrishes, about their magical year searching for the Welsh king Glendower and never of Daddy’s life before the quest. 

That in all their house, there was only one photo of people the girls could call grandparents: a faded Polaroid, Belfast in the 80s, Aurora and Niall embracing along a bridge beneath a streetlamp in early spring. 

Maeve, the eldest, must have seen the missing pieces of the puzzle, followed the breadcrumbs to the padlocked door and faded caution tape. But Maeve was tactful, always calculating and thinking and weighing her options—a child of Adam Parrish even if they didn’t share DNA. If she had connected all the dots, then she knew what _not_ to ask. 

Noah, on the other hand... 

Both their girls were curious creatures. While Maeve preferred to observe in silence--watching and listening and picking up clues and piecing them together before anyone realized she’d guessed the answer—Noah’s curiosity was loud. Insistent. She poked, prodded, pulled things apart as much as she could until she found the answer she wanted. Sometimes, that answer was imaginative: she threw a temper tantrum once when Adam not only told her where glitter came from (a factory) but also showed her a documentary on how it was made, because she didn’t _want_ that answer, she wanted something _fun_ and _magical_ and _you ruined it, Daddy!_

Other time, Noah demanded the truth. 

Ever since the unit on families, in which a homework assignment was to draw a family tree, Noah had been asking about her grandparents. Ronan’s side was easy: they were dead. Simple enough. But Adam _must_ have someone, _must_ have had parents, because even if there weren’t photographers or stories or old knick-knacks, _everyone_ has parents even if they aren’t your vie-a-logical parents (“It’s _biological,_ Noah,” Maeve told her, to which Noah stuck out her tongue and declared herself the master of science because _she_ was currently in a science class and clearly _Maeve_ had not taken science, because Noah’s school was so much better than Maeve’s had been , except “Noah, _I_ went to that school, too!”) 

She was right, of course, Adam _did_ have parents and, no, they weren’t dead—well, one of them at least—and, no, we aren’t going to see them, and no, he didn’t want to talk about them, and Ronan, would you please help Maeve with putting away the leftovers I need to, I have to...there’s a... 

And Ronan had been left with cleaning up after dinner while helping Maeve with a last-minute arts and crafts science project on biomes while trying to teach Noah how to spell “become”, “believe”, “belong”, and “between” because Adam needed to take a long walk around the fields and feel the cold winds of late November cut his skin and seep into his bones to remind himself that he was _not_ a terrible person and he was _not_ a terrible father for trying to hide the dirt treads and bloodstains of his past. 

“You don’t have to tell them,” Ronan said again. 

“If I don’t, who will? What if someone lets it slip one day? Will it hurt them more if they thought I kept it from them?” 

“You’re not keeping ish from them Parrish,” Ronan said, self-censoring and clearly pained over it. It was only a matter of time before he gave up his life as cursing-celibate; once he was confident the girls were hearing worse than shit, fuck, and damn at school every day, all bets were off. “This isn’t, like, their birth parents or a new toy, or whatever the fork. It’s _yours,_ not theirs.” 

Adam shook his head. He chewed on the edge of his cuticle. “No, that’s not how this works. They have a right to this.” 

“Okay,” Ronan shrugged. He leaned back on his elbows and sprawled his legs down the steps. “Call them over then. I’ll tell them about K, too.” 

Adam startled, dropping his hand into his lap. “What? No. Absolutely not.” 

“Why not? They have a right to that, too, don’t they?” 

“No, no they don’t. These are not even remotely equivalent things.” 

“They’re my daughters, aren’t they? So they have a right to know everything I’ve done, just in case. Because _that’s_ what this is about, isn’t it?” Ronan sat up and turned on Adam, shoulders squared as he poked him in the sternum. “You feel like you need to tell them because of that ‘but what if I become him’ bullshit I _know_ is circling in your head right now like a giant turd trying to go down a clogged toilet.” 

“God, _ew_ _,_ what the hell, Lynch?” 

“Yeah, good luck getting that image outta your head.” He tapped his temple. “That should keep you from spiraling.” 

Adam rolled his eyes. He sighed resignedly. “It’s not that,” Adam said. “It’s not about _him_ , or...any of that. It’s,” he sighed again, and looked to the sky for words and clarity. It told him nothing, only a swarm of starlings twisting through the golden light. “I don’t want to lie to them, not if they’re asking.” 

“This isn’t lying,” Ronan insisted. “It’s omitting.” 

“ _You_ think there’s a difference between those two things, but I promise you there’s not.” 

“Are you telling them something that didn’t happen? No. Are you leaving out key details? Yes. See? It’s different.” 

They’d had this same argument for over fifteen years; no ground was gained on either side. 

“Listen, I...I want them to know how much I love them,” Adam said at last. “How much I love this life we’ve built, how much I love that I get to live the rest of my days with them.” 

“They already know all that, man,” Ronan said as he took a swing from his beer. “That’s a no-forking-brainer.” 

Adam held his hands together against his mouth to keep them from shaking. His wedding ring pressed into his skin. “I want them to understand, though, what it means. What love means, that it’s a choice we all make. That I chose them. I chose you. I chose everyone left in my life. And I want them to know that they can chose, too. That they can find families and love in all sorts of places. That they don’t need to love people who hurt them.” 

Ronan took Adam’s hands in his and kissed every knuckle; he left a long and searing kissing on the silver wedding band. 

“They’re smart and kind and compassionate and the best two kids we could have ever had, and...and I need them to know that I—that _we—_ chose them. That I will always choose them. And you. And—and—I don’t know. It feels like the right thing to do, to tell them.” 

Ronan held his gaze, hands clasped in his and arms on Adam’s knees. They were close enough that Adam could count the laugh lines that crinkled the corner of his eyes and mouth, pick each of the grey hairs that now sparkled across his buzzed head. 

He nodded. “Okay. Okay.” 

Adam smiled, half a quirk of his mouth, his shoulders sagging with relief. Ronan put a hand on Adam’s neck and guided his forehead to his lips. And then-- 

“Hey, Dad?” Maeve called. “Uh, there’s some smoke--” 

“It smells like campfire!” Noah yelled. 

Ronan turned to the grill. Black smoke poured from beneath the hood. He scrambled out of the embrace and tumbled down the stairs yelling a monologue of colorful and definitely not-child-appropriate swears as he ran barefoot to the grill. 

The girls screamed that he must put five whole dollars in the swear jar as if calling for his head in 18th century France. The dogs barked in agreement. 

“I think,” Adam said, knees cracking as he stood up, “that it’ll be a pizza night, instead.” 

###### 

May tumbled into June without anyone noticing. Longer days and warmer nights; summer nipping at their heels as the girls tumbled through the fields on the first days of their break. 

Adam had not heard any news about his mother. He did not know if this was because nothing had happened, or because no one knew to contact him. 

He did not know which would be worse. 

###### 

It was the first day of summer. Bright blue sky and big, white clouds. Cicadas buzzing and bumble bees toddling from bloom to bloom. 

Adam sat on the porch swing with James Joyce’s _Dubliners_ open in his lap. He’d been reading the same sentence over and over for the past hour, getting nowhere, no longer trying. _As he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling..._

Ronan was tending the vegetable garden with the girls and dogs, which meant he had only pulled three weeds over the past two hours and everyone was soaking wet from surprise hose attacks. Cow, the corgi, was now chewing on a decrepit tennis ball they’d found underneath the mint plants. Lucy, the border collie, had spent the past ten minutes trying to get a butterfly to play tag. 

He loved them all so much it hurt. 

Maeve appeared, then, at the top of the porch steps. She sat next to him on the porch swing, bare feet stained by fresh earth and cut grass. Her overalls were splattered with paint in an almost intentional fashion—a souvenir from a weekend with Aunt Blue and Uncle Gansey—and her tie-dye t-shirt from summer camp was damp with sweat and hose water. Noah was laughing wildly, being chased through their sprawling front lawn first by the dogs, and then by Ronan wielding a garden hose with manic fervor. 

“Tired already?” he asked, mussing her hair. 

Maeve shrugged. She took a long sip of his water. “Bored,” she said. 

Adam mouthed a silent “ah.” 

“And you looked lonely,” she added, “sitting here by yourself.” 

Adam quirked a brow. “Being alone does not automatically make one lonely.” 

She sucked her teeth. “I _know_ that. But you were alone and _also_ looked lonely.” 

Adam didn’t argue. Maeve shimmied her shoulders the way she always did when victorious. She sank back into the turquoise cushions. “Are you okay?” she asked, head tilted as she assessed his profile. 

“Yeah. Why?” Adam said. 

She shrugged. “You’ve been weird. Dad’s been weird, too, but you’ve been weirder.” 

“I’m always weird.” 

Maeve rolled her eyes. “You and Dad aren’t fighting, are you?” she said, and the worry was unmistakable. 

“No, we are not fighting. You never have to worry about that, okay?” Adam said. Life was full of uncertainty, and Adam tried to never promise anything that might not be true in the future. But the one thing he would always promise was that he would love Ronan Lynch until the day they laid his corpse in the ground. 

“You don’t have to tell me what it is, then,” Maeve said then, obviously comforted but clearly not dissuaded. “I just wanted to ask.” 

“No, you’re right. I--” Adam paused to gather himself and his thoughts, “I want to tell you what’s going on, Maeve. But, it’s more complicated than that. And I don’t want to tell you if you’re not ready.” 

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Maeve said sharply. She was right, to an extent: she was almost done 6th grade, would be turning 12 at the end of the summer. And it amazed Adam every day how smart, and thoughtful, and determined, and brave she was. How she could break her arm and never cry, how kind and helpful she was to her teammates in sports, how she held and calmed Noah after nightmares, how much she could hold in that still-growing brain of hers. 

And if Adam could say all of those things about her, it would be dishonest of him to say that she wasn’t ready to hear this story. Especially if she, knowing what this story would be about, believed herself to be ready. 

It wasn’t Maeve who wasn’t ready, Adam realized. It was him. 

They had danced around this conversation many times before—never dishonest, but never telling the whole truth—but both Adam and Ronan knew that a day would come when the story needed to be told. 

Adam was not ready for that day to be now, here, on this bench, in an ocean of sunlight, surrounded by blooming lilac bushes and sweet-smelling honeysuckle. He would, however, _never_ be ready for it. There would never be an instance where such darkness would feel...appropriate...for his hopeful little girl to hear. 

“It’s a long story,” he said, buying time. “It’s not a nice story, either.” 

Maeve was not fooled. “Daddy,” she said again, sternly. 

Adam sighed. He closed his eyes for a long minute, and vainly hoped that Maeve’s patience was still the shallow well it had been when she was five. It was not; she had not moved when he opened his eyes, still and calm with big brown eyes watching him thoughtfully. _Damn her maturity._

“You need to promise me that you’ll tell me to stop if it gets to be too much, okay?” 

She nodded. 

“Promise me, bug.” 

“I promise.” She held out her pinky. Adam linked his with hers, and they kissed their knuckles. 

“This isn’t easy for me to talk about,” Adam admitted, their hands still linked. “I might need to stop, too.” 

“You always tell me it’s okay to be sad. You’re allowed to be sad, too, you know.” 

Adam took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” 

Maeve curled her fingers around the edge of the bench and leaned forward to swing her legs back and forth. The chair creaked and groaned. 

Over the years, Adam had thought of hundreds of different ways to begin this conversation. He scribbled notes on Post-Its; stitched together scripts during his morning showers; rehearsed in his car on the way home from work. A thousand different ways to say “my father hit me and my mother let him.” None of them ever seemed right. 

“Just before I turned eighteen, I was emancipated, and I moved into my own apartment for my senior year,” Adam said. 

“Emancipated,” Maeve repeated, tasting the word. “That means ‘to be freed’, right? Like, the Emancipation Proclamation, when President Lincoln declared all the slaves to be free.” 

“Yes, exactly. I was emancipated from my parents. No longer legally bound to them. Because...” and this is where it got hard, when his throat constricted and pressure built behind his eyes and he needed to take a few deep breaths before he could tell his daughter, “because my father abused me.” 

Maeve’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said softly. She leaned back into the cushions. A hummingbird darted by the glass nectar bottle hanging among the moonflower vines, and stopped to take a drink. “Like, he...hit you?” 

“Yes.” 

“All your life?” 

Adam nodded. “Until I left.” 

“Did he go to jail?” 

“No. According to the courts, he was a first-time offender. It went on his record, and he was fined.” 

She thought about this, feet still for a moment. Adam picked at a thread he’d pulled loose from his jeans. 

“Is he why you’re deaf in your ear?” 

Adam swallowed. “Yes.” 

“You never talk about him,” Maeve said. “There are no pictures of him.” It wasn’t an accusation; simply an acknowledgment of facts, rearranging memories and knowledge in her head to fit this new revelation, to understand what he’d shown her hidden behind the door. “Did you ever see him again?” 

“Not after the court case, no. I went to his funeral.” 

Standing by the graveside long after the mourners had left, choking on dust as soil rained down onto the coffin. White hot tears and breaking dreamstuff and screaming and drowning, drowning, drowning in a raging sea of grief and shame and hate. 

“Did Dad ever meet him?” 

“Yes. He knew him.” 

“Did he like Dad?” 

“No, my father did not like Dad.” 

Because Dad had an inheritance worth more than the combined wealth of 10 generations of Parrishes. Because Dad drove an expensive car and wore expensive clothes and went to that expensive school and was one of those goddamn DRFs. Because Dad punched Robert in the face the night Adam lost hearing in his left ear. Because Dad was in the courtroom when Robert was charged and testified against him as one of the only witnesses. Because Dad saw Robert at Kroger once, and he dented the Toyota pick-up's bumper with a shopping cart and left a drawing of a dick in his windshield wiper as “insurance”. 

“Because he’s a man,” Maeve assumed. 

“That was certainly part of it.” Because that was always part of it, whenever anyone had a problem with them or their family. Because what did it say about Robert to have his only worthless offspring screwing around with a _boy_? 

Across the field, Cow was carrying a stick twice his size, trotting like a show horse, while Lucy nipped at the ends with the intent to steal it. Ronan cheered by the vegetable garden. Noah waved a fistful of weeds over her head triumphantly and Ronan shouted, “atta girl!” as they danced in the shower of dirt from the gnarled roots. 

“Why did he do it?” Maeve asked quietly. Her sharp brows were furrowed, small mouth turned into a frown. 

If Adam had an answer to that question, he probably would have spent far less time in his therapist's office. He told her the truth. “I don’t know.” 

“Ricky Andrews’ dad used to drink a lot, and Ricky said that he and his mom would yell, like, all night long. Break stuff, sometimes, too. Was he—was your dad—was it the same? For you?” 

Adam did not know who Ricky Andrews was, did not know this kid’s connection or relation to his daughter, did not know if those broken things included bones. He did know, however, know the answer to Maeve’s unasked question. 

“No, not quite the same.” Robert Parrish had been a poor man wealthy in vices—many of them damnable ones—but excessive drunkenness wasn’t one of them. He gambled. He cheated. He spewed hatred and vitriol like a broken hose pipe, splattering and soaking anyone who stood near him. But he only ever enjoyed Natty Light in uncharacteristic moderation. “He broke things, and yelled often, and hurt me. But it wasn’t because of alcohol. He was just angry,” Adam said. “Sometimes people are just...angry.” 

Angry at the Purdue factory for pay cuts, at the Redskins for losing, at his truck for squealing brakes and a cracked windshield after an ice storm. Angry at the neighbor’s dog, burnt dinner, taxes, ice cubes, potholes, the wrong brand of toilet paper, rain delays, God. Angry at nothing and at everything. And always, _always,_ angry at Adam. For doing homework, for eating food, for breathing, for hearing, for taking up space in their small little trailer, for bothering to exist at all. 

“That’s not an excuse,” Maeve said at last, and Adam felt her righteous anger suddenly simmering just beneath the surface. “That’s not an excuse to hit a kid. To hit _your_ kid.” 

“No, it’s not. An explanation, maybe. But not an excuse.” 

Maeve seethed for a while, fists clenching and unclenching the sanded wood of the swing. “That’s stupid. And not fair. And not okay,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “He should be in jail. Forever. And ever.” 

“He passed away a long time ago,” Adam reminded her. 

“Well I hope he’s in jail in the underworld.” 

Ronan, in the throes of his own scathing hatred for Robert Parrish, had often said the same thing. Except Ronan was not currently enamored with Greek mythology, and used more creative (and foul) language to express the same sentiment. The most memorable—and offensive—of which was something about being “fucked in the ass by a spear-dicked demon while Satan munched on burnt-ass popcorn right in front of his goddamn face.” 

A breeze rippled through the grass, weaving through a tangle of dreamed windchimes singing the discordant notes of Murder Squash. The hummingbird flitted away. 

Maeve inhaled sharply, and exhaled with a _whoosh_ through her mouthed shaped like an O. Blowing out the burner so the anger might settle into stillness once more. After a moment, she looked contemplative once more. She said, “we learned about that in health class in fifth grade. Mrs. Hollis told us that abuse was cyclical. That kids who were abused sometimes turned into parents who abused, and on and on.” 

Adam’s chest tightened. He couldn’t look at her, only managing a small, feeble, “yes.” 

“But people break the cycle,” Maeve continued, “right? That’s what Mrs. Hollis said, at least. Therapy, and, like...effort, and all that.” 

Which was far better abuse education than what Adam had received at Mountainview Elementary School. He couldn’t even remember _having_ health class. 

Something unwound in his chest with that. Maeve was looking at him, head tilted thoughtfully, appraising him. “I think you broke it,” she said at last. “Do you?” 

It took more effort than Adam dared admit to keep his voice steady when he replied, “I hope so.” 

Ronan looked over, then. His sharp smile turned to a frown, brows knotting at whatever look had twisted Adam’s features. Adam smiled faintly and tapped his hand twice to his chest. It was a movement that could easily be interpreted as a scratch, or adjusting a shirt, or fiddling with a button: a quick, sneaky way to tell the other they were okay when a verbal confirmation wasn’t an option. Usually deployed during work parties when Adam saw Ronan cornered into polite conversation with various business partners, or when Ronan found Adam fidgeting his anxiety away while on a million-year-long phone call in his at-home office. 

Noah squealed delightedly, more mud than girl and standing under the waterfall from the hose. Ronan smiled back at Adam, pressed his thumb into hose nozzle, and sprayed Noah in the face with a fan of water. 

Adam and Maeve swung their legs back and forth in tandem. Maeve took another sip of Adam’s water, and then handed him the glass to finish. 

“Does Ricky Andrews still talk about things like that?” Adam asked. “About his dad...yelling.” He didn’t want to assume, didn’t want to inadvertently spread rumors through his daughter’s middle school, didn’t want get the wrong people involved in a situation that could easily get so much worse for Ricky or his mom if his father thought one of them had alerted other parents or teachers or CPS or the police-- 

Maeve shrugged. “He’s not in my classes anymore. I think his parents got divorced. Someone said he and his mom left and moved to North Carolina. I think his grandparents are there, or an aunt, or something. I don’t know—uh-oh, Daddy, your jeans--” 

The loose thread had become a hole. Adam slumped back in his seat and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Ah well,” he sighed. 

“Aunt Blue can patch it,” Maeve said. 

Aunt Blue's definition of “patching” was removing the hole as well as everything else below mid-thigh, turning them into cut-off jorts with frayed hems for _fashion_ , or something. 

“She’s busy with the baby,” Adam said, which wasn’t unture. Although, Perse wasn’t really a baby anymore, now 2 and a half (which she _loved_ to shout at anyone who would listen, usually followed by a “no” or incoherent babble that vaguely resembled old welsh.) 

“Why’re you telling me this now?” Maeve asked. “About your parents.” 

“My mom is dying, I think.” 

“Huh. You think?” 

“Maura said she appeared on St. Mark’s Eve.” 

“Oh.” 

“That means she’s going to die this year.” 

“Huh.” 

“We don’t know when. Or how. But it will happen.” 

“Mm.” 

“I think I need to go see her.” 

Maeve furrowed her brow. “Does that mean we’ll all have to see her?” 

Adam...hadn’t actually thought about that. The answer was obvious. “No.” 

“Good.” 

“Good?” 

“I don’t want to meet someone who hurt you,” Maeve said decisively. 

“I don’t really want to see her, either,” Adam admitted softly. “But. This may be the last time I do. So. I think—I think I need to.” 

Maeve nodded. Not convinced, but not one to argue. She chewed on the edge of her nail. 

“Besides,” she said suddenly, “I have other people that count. Uncle Gansey’s sort of like a grandpa.” 

That made Adam smile, which, given Maeve’s crafty little smirk, was probably the point. Then, she turned to him and said, “thank you for sharing that with me. It’s hard to be vulnerable, and I appreciate that you told me.” 

Both of Adam’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline. “That’s very mature of you, Maeve. I’m impressed.” 

Maeve rolled her eyes so hard it moved her whole head, and heaved a sigh that could only have been learned from watching teenagers in movies and TV shows. The absurd duality of an eleven year-old: empathetic beyond her years and yet desperate to sound just a few years older. A laugh suddenly bubbled up in Adam, and Maeve scowled at him. 

“I’m not laughing at you, I promise,” Adam said, but he kept laughing, and Maeve’s scrunched-up face turned more and more comically sour. 

“ _Daddy.”_

“I’m sorry, I am. I’ll stop.” And he did. And he felt, oddly enough, much lighter than he’d felt in a very long time. 

A long, loud shriek of “daddy” echoed across the field, the last syllable stretched out until Noah had no choice but to stop and breathe. She was running towards them, her gap-tooth smile the only clean part left. 

“Hey,” Adam said, looping her arm around Maeve’s shoulders and pulling her close. “I love you, bug.” 

“Love you too, daddy,” she said grudgingly, scrunching her face once more as Adam kissed her hairline. 

Noah ran up the steps as Maeve pushed him away; she jumped up two steps, tripped over the lip of third, nearly fell on her face, crawled up the last step and hopped back on her feet as if nothing had happened, and then ran to the swing and threw herself into Adam’s chest. 

“Noah!” Maeve yelled, cringing away from the mud splatter. “We’re having a moment!” 

Noah ignored her, bouncing up and down, smearing mud all over Adam’s shirt. “Dad said we could have ice cream if _you_ say we can have ice cream, so can we have ice cream can we can we please daddy please please pleeeeaase?” she trilled. 

He held her waist to keep her from toppling over. “Ice cream? Now?” 

Ronan clunked up the stairs in his oversized boots. Adam looked at him with brows raised. He shrugged. “I wanted it,” he said. 

Adam sighed. “Bath first,” he ordered. “Then ice cream.” 

Noah squealed. She scrambled off his lap and ran into the house before Adam could finish telling her to, “use soap, please!” 

“Can I have ice cream, too?” Maeve said, sliding off the swing. 

“Go ahead, bug,” Ronan said, ruffling her hair. “Only one!” 

“Kay,” she hollered, and the screen door slapped shut. 

Ronan took her spot on the bench with a groan. The dogs chased each other through the field, the stick now in Lucy’s control. 

“I told her,” Adam confessed quietly. 

Ronan said nothing. He twined their fingers together, and pulled him close and pressed kiss after kiss to his temple. Adam let out a shuddering breath. 

“I’m going. Next month. When they’re away.” 

Ronan looked at him, ice blue searching for any hesitation or uncertainty. He found none. So he nodded, resolute, and held Adam tight. 

“Ice cream?” he muttered into Adam’s hearing ear. 

Adam chuckled, rubbing his dry eyes hard enough to make them water. “Ice cream.” 

“You can have two; I won’t tell.” 

“They’ll know.” 

“Yeah, can’t hide anything from them, the little monsters.” 

Ronan stood and offered Adam his hand. “I’ll go with you, you know.” 

Adam took the hand, but shook his head. “I know. But I need to go alone.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel, of sorts, for [Unto Dust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707400/chapters/36507327). Inspired by listening to The Raven Boys on audiobook and thinking "huh I wonder what would happen if Fox Way saw Adam's parents die on St Marks Eve". So. 
> 
> You can read more about Ronan and Adam and Maeve and Noah in the [Parrish-Lynch Parenting Extravaganza Series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435402).
> 
> This fic is basically a whole lot of talking and purple prose, so cheers if you're into it.


End file.
